The News
As most of the Internet is now aware, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. cursed out Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. on the House floor this week during a fight over their competing efforts to impeach President Joe Biden. Some readers may have been taken aback by the collapse of Congressional decorum. But others may have been more surprised by the fact that, yes, there are already dueling efforts to impeach the president.
For the perplexed, here’s a quick guide to all the various impeachment efforts currently aimed at Biden, as well as those targeting four other administration officials.
President Joe Biden
Four Republican members have introduced separate impeachment resolutions against Biden, including Reps. Greene, Boebert, Bill Posey, R-Fla. and Andy Ogles, R-Tenn. All of them center around Biden’s handling of the border. However, Ogles has added language pointing to the uncorroborated allegations that Biden and his family were involved in a bribery scheme that Republicans have recently seized on.
Greene was the first to file a resolution and has accused Boebert of essentially copying and trying to hop over her effort.
Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
Four Republican members of Congress have filed impeachment resolutions against Mayorkas. All of them center around the influx of migrant people illegally entering the U.S.-Mexico border. Reps. Greene, R-Colo., Clay Higgins, R-La., Pat Fallon, R-Texas and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.
Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General
Greene’s impeachment resolution against Garland includes a litany of Republican qualms about the DOJ. As she summed it up: “Merrick Garland has weaponized the Department of Justice against Americans in many different ways, all kinds of every level: from January 6th people that walked through the Capitol to parents holding their school boards accountable to pro-life Catholics, and it goes on and on to President Trump with the document’s case. It’s outrageous.”
Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Greene also introduced articles of impeachment against Wray, a favorite target of former president Donald Trump, accusing him of “facilitating the development of a Federal police force to intimidate, harass, and entrap American citizens that are deemed enemies of the Biden regime.”
The list of accusations is long and includes some familiar conservative complaints over issues like Hunter Biden’s laptop and the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, as well as less well-known ones, such as that the Bureau had a plan to spy on traditionalist Catholic groups believed to be tied to white supremacists. Wray “has spit in the face of Republicans on the Oversight Committee and has refused to comply with our subpoena with unclassified forms,” she told reporters this week.
Matthew Graves: U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
On May 16, Greene introduced impeachment articles accusing Graves of “endangering, compromising, and undermining” the justice system, because his office is currently declining to indict 67% of people arrested for local crimes in D.C., up from 35% in 2015, despite rising crime. (Graves has said the decline in prosecutions is partly due to police body-camera footage bringing more scrutiny to arrests as well as problems with D.C.’s crime lab).